Postal systems around the world have taken a stance on the matter of differentiating between “Lettermail” and “Goods/Merchandise”:

“The Universal Postal Union (UPU) has new rules for shipments between the postal systems in different countries starting January 2018. Postal items will be differentiated as “documents” or “goods”.

• [URL removed] a letter-post, parcel-post or EMS item consisting of any piece of written, drawn, printed or digital information, excluding objects of merchandise, whose physical specifications lie within the limits specified in the Regulations

• [URL removed] basically everything else

These changes were pushed through in the 2016 UPU meeting in part because of the large financial imbalances that some countries (by exporting stuff via letterpost) were placing on postal systems of other countries.

… customs and security requirements to make the provision of electronic advance data (EAD) mandatory on all postal items containing goods."

Hello Mark, I stopped International shipping over year ago. It is just to expensive to ship less expensive items international. I can not give fault to buyers not wanting to pay that expensive shipping. I was spinning a lot of wheels and going no where trying to ship international. I can live without the stress of quoting a price for shipping and never hearing from the would be buyer again……….

I dont ship much international since it almost doubled a few years back….But regular shipping here in the US has gone up also. i use paypal to ship, and they have gone up also. what used to cost $2.61 is now $2.66 and the other packages have gone up also.

You can still send books through the USPS as Media Mail.

Thanks mrdutch that helps clarify the situation!!

I also stopped providing international shipping due to the increase in costs.

Magazines, are not supposed to be shipped media mail because they contain ads, and USPS does not care if they are 30 years old. Of course that’s if they bother to open your package for inspection.